September 15, 2010

Major study of Central Asian populations (Martinez-Cruz et al. 2010)

I have often commented on the fact that Central Asians were mainly formed by the pendulum of Western Eurasians (Caucasoids) moving east with Indo-Iranian languages during prehistory and the later historical westward movement of Turkic speakers. There were other movements besides these, e.g., the Tocharians represent a non-Indo-Iranian eastward Caucasoid movement, while the Mongols represent a non-Turkic westward Mongoloid movement.

Central Asians are therefore today a variable mix of Caucasoids and Mongoloids, formed over the last few millennia, although the constituent elements are still present and recognizable. The Turkicization of the region was, to a large extent, the result of language shift among Iranian populations (Sakas-Scythians), but not without some genetic contribution from the original Turks who were a Mongoloid people akin to their linguistic Altaic cousins, the Mongols. This Mongoloid component is attenuated westward, reaching its minimum among Anatolian and Balkan Turkish speakers.

With respect to the admixture proportions (figure top left) presented in the paper, I have a couple of quick comments:

Using modern south Asians as representatives of a source population of Central Asia is problematic, as modern south Asians are admixed, comprised of Caucasoids and indigenous South Asians. While South Asia may have been a population source during remote periods of the Paleolithic, in the more recent post-Neolithic times when Central Asian populations were formed, South Asia was a population sink.

The use of only a few autosomal markers does give a broad overview of the east-west components in these populations, but it should be noted that the use of few markers tends to overestimate minority ancestral components.

Even with such a small number of markers, it is evident that the separation of groups at the population level is possible, as the correspondence analysis indicates: green/European, red/East Asian, blue/Indo-Iranian from Central Asia, orange/Turkic from Central Asia.

UPDATE

The paper includes STRUCTURE results for K=2 to K=6. Below is the STRUCTURE run for K=6:

While less distinct than what we would get with more markers, the emergence of several clusters of individuals is apparent (from left to right: East Asian, Turkic, Central Asian Iranian, South Asian, West Eurasian, Sub-Saharan). Notice how Hazaras and Uyghurs are islands of the Turkic component in the Central/South Asian cluster, and how some Uzbeks are Iranian-like while others are Turkic-like. I am reminded of an older study which found how mythology was used among some Uzbek groups to create a common ancestry for groups of unrelated origin.

In the heartland of Eurasia: the multilocus genetic landscape of Central Asian populations

Begoña Martínez-Cruz

Located in the Eurasian heartland, Central Asia has played a major role in both the early spread of modern humans out of Africa and the more recent settlements of differentiated populations across Eurasia. A detailed knowledge of the peopling in this vast region would therefore greatly improve our understanding of range expansions, colonizations and recurrent migrations, including the impact of the historical expansion of eastern nomadic groups that occurred in Central Asia. However, despite its presumable importance, little is known about the level and the distribution of genetic variation in this region. We genotyped 26 Indo-Iranian- and Turkic-speaking populations, belonging to six different ethnic groups, at 27 autosomal microsatellite loci. The analysis of genetic variation reveals that Central Asian diversity is mainly shaped by linguistic affiliation, with Turkic-speaking populations forming a cluster more closely related to East-Asian populations and Indo-Iranian speakers forming a cluster closer to Western Eurasians. The scattered position of Uzbeks across Turkic- and Indo-Iranian-speaking populations may reflect their origins from the union of different tribes. We propose that the complex genetic landscape of Central Asian populations results from the movements of eastern, Turkic-speaking groups during historical times, into a long-lasting group of settled populations, which may be represented nowadays by Tajiks and Turkmen. Contrary to what is generally thought, our results suggest that the recurrent expansions of eastern nomadic groups did not result in the complete replacement of local populations, but rather into partial admixture.

48 comments:

We propose that the complex genetic landscape of Central Asian populations results from the movements of eastern, Turkic-speaking groups during historical times, into a long-lasting group of settled populations, which may be represented nowadays by Tajiks and Turkmen.

Turkmens are nomadic (at least they were so until being forcibly largely settled by the Soviets during the 20th century) and Turkic-speaking. Do they say that Turkmens may genetically represent the pre-Turkic settled populations of Central Asia?

Another thing that has caught my eye here is that here they mention pre-Turkic settled populations but omit pre-Turkic nomads. Most of pre-Turkic Central Asia was already nomadic, represented by Sakas/Scythians, so Turkic expansion in Central Asia was mainly into an already nomadic area and culture.

BTW, wish they had included more countries from Central Asia and the surrounding territories in their analysis.

Dieneke, is the population abbreviated as TUR Turkmen? If yes, it seems Turkmens too are genetically Central Asian Iranian-like (thus I guess answering my question in my previous post, but still they should have also mentioned pre-Turkic nomads in addition to pre-Turkic settled populations). Also if they are Turkmen, are they the only Turkmen population tested? If they are the only Turkmen population tested, then this doesn't tell us much about Turkmens in general.

Maybe pre-turkic populations settled in the region a long time ago but had a nomadic lifestyle (within the region).

You mean they used the word "settled" to mean being long-lasting in the territory instead of living in immovable houses? I don't think that is the case as they use "settled" together with "long-lasting".

Thanks a lot for this article and all the articles of the last month (especially the one about Carlssen&democracy...)I should say that the link below(that you provided)refering to the mythology of central Asian peoples (is it about ergenekon and the shewolf ashina...?) does not work.

Please note on the map that while Turkic speaking UZT do LACK the middle eastern green component all his Iranic speaking 4 neighbors (TJA, TJU, TDU, TDS) do have that middle eastern green component=> a proof for a middle eastern origin for Indo-Iranian (and also Indo-European) languages phylum (also please note that many of the technology+husbandry+agriculture+religion+some animals+some metals... words in both Iranic&Turkic languages[tshelik, eker, oekuez, koemuer, kam, kedi, ketshi, kaz, din, tshelebi...]have an ultimate western Asian origin and do have same parallels in western Asian languages such as Semitic and the latter also provides etymologies for those words that are not explainable by Turkic and-to a lesser extent-Iranic etymology)

Ashraf, "din" entered Turkic languages from the Arabic version of the word and after the Islamization of Turkic-speaking peoples just as it entered any other language of the world with Islamization, so it doesn't prove your point. But you are probably right about "oekuez", "koemuer", "kedi", "kaz" and "tshelebi" (these words are probably ultimately from either an Indo-European, Semitic or any other West Asian-Mediterranean language). OTOH, "Tshelik" may be an originally Turkic word and may have entered Persian from a Turkic language (probably from an Oghuz Turkic language during the last millennium). I don't know the etymology of "kam", so I cannot say anything about it and would be appreciated if you inform me about it. You are probably wrong about "ketshi" as it is probably an originally Turkic word. As to "eker", I have never heard of such a word, so I can't say anyhing about it.

According to Gamkrelidze&Ivanonv "eker" and "ketshi" are indo-european/semitic common words.You know that agriculture and animal domestication was "discovered" in the fertile crescent area (and also metallurgy first appeared in Anatolia)and thus the words connected with agriculture, metal and husbandry diffused to central Asia either by demic or/and by cultural diffusion as wandeworts.

Same the word "ketshi" also do descend (still according to Gamkrelidze&Ivanonv) from proto indo-european "ghaid" which itself is a "loanword" from proto Afro-Asiatic "gayd"(goat, kid)

I know that "din" is an Arabic "loanword" I spoke about old Persian "dena" (religion) which is not explainable by iranic etymology but has Semitic etymology and connected derivative words such as "dayna, daynu, dayn" from ps "dyn"=rule, justice.

As for Turkish "tshelik" (the other words for metals in Turkish are also "loanwords" like "kalay", "kurshun", "bakir","guemuesh" and that's normal cause metallurgy "urheimat" is Anatolia and not eastern Siberia...) I think that here too we should look for an Anatolian origined "wanderwort" and an etymology from a language of that area (ie Anatolia, Caucasus and Western Asia as a whole) for the obvious reasons I explained (ie eastern Siberia recieved metallurgy from Anatolia) and the Turkic etymology does not look convincing (ie from "tshel"=to hit)+the Turkish words that start with "tsh" many times end up being "loanwords" as if proto Turkic forms could not start with "tsh".So I have a (personal) speculation/proposition that it's connected with Persian "tshiling"(an iron tool) or Arabic "silk" (wire) [the "tsh" form could be explained by a loan from Aramaic]

mr Aaron:

That blue (if it's the same dark blue showed in Behar's study)is too old (its genesis is very old) to fit with bronze age proto indo-europeans who have a language that contained words for both agriculture&metallurgy while the dark blue appears as a very old component that had its genesis by paleolithic times and thus it should be a primitive basic language consisting of some hundred of monosyllabic onomatopeic sounds and that's why this language was completly submerged by the advancing anatolian farmers (light blue component=>languages such as khattic, pelasgian, vasco-aquitano-iberian...) and then by the bronze age indo-european "warriors"

And according to some linguists (I forget his name but it could be Kalevi Wiik?) traces of this very old language could only be found in some substrate words amongst some isolated Saami groups.

I haven't read Gamkrelidze or Ivanov, so I cannot make any comment on their etymologies.

As for Turkish "tshelik" (the other words for metals in Turkish are also "loanwords" like "kalay", "kurshun", "bakir","guemuesh" and that's normal cause metallurgy "urheimat" is Anatolia and not eastern Siberia...)

"kalay": like "din", loanword from Arabic during the Islamic times of Turkic peoples, so it is irrelevant

"kurshun": a word of obscure origins, still, it may be originally Turkic

"bakir": probably ultimately descended from a West Asian language (Eteocypriot?) and also cognate with English "copper" (from Latin "aes Cyprum")

Thank you (I quoted some sections of Gamkrelidze&Ivanonv book in other forums) but the difficulity is that there is no proto Altaic nor even proto Turkic roots that could explain the etymology of "kurshun" and "guemuesh"+ the fact that "plomb" and "argent" metallurgy did not originated in eastern Siberia that's why one will think that a "foreign" source for those words is not impossible.

There was continous contacts in central Asia between various folks and some of Indo-European, Semitic words etc were borrowed so early as proto altaic continuity period such as "oekuez" =ox

I think it is going to be quite hard to get a solid grip on the chronology and sequencing of the migrations, and to tie linguistic evidence to genetic evidence, until we have better archeology from the region, which is astonishingly unexplored given its importance it putting together a lot of important puzzles (Indo-European origins, South Asian migration waves, Mesolithic Eurasian activity, etc.), presumably mostly not because the evidence isn't out there, but because local political conditions were not conducive to doing the work once people figued out that there ought to be something worth finding out there. It seems as if there was a considerable period in which these civilizations were very developed for civilizations that left no writings behind.

Current linguistics and current genetic makeups simply lack much power to tell you when they arrived on the scene in the period before we have good historical records.

I have educated guesses, and I suspect that anyone who looks at the data is bound to develop those, but without some solid carbon dated traces of ancient material culture (or even better, ancient DNA) in some of these areas with little reported archeology, it is hard to know.

A few preliminary academic writings a glanced now and then (sorry, citations lost), translated from Russian from the Caspian Sea area is suggestive of Egyptian influence and megalithic activity far further into Central Asia than one would ordinarily imagine from a pretty ancient date. If I were to pick one area where I would expect to be really surprised by new findings in a way that might change the overall picture, this would be it.

There are what are called "sound shifts" for example Greek "bio" (life) Latin "vita" and Sanskrit "jiya" old irish "bethu" old english "cwic"[read quick] cognates that descend from the same constructed (but its more collect to call it guessed) proto indo-european root *gwey which means "to live"

Note that those cognates of the descendant ie languages do not all mean "life" but semantically have various meanings from "live" to "world"

This great variability of descending ie words is explained by Gamkrelidze&Ivanonv by the fact that indo-european descending languages are in fact indo-european languages spoken by local pre ie speaking folks who outnumbered the (logically as established in Europe and India since paleolthic and neolithic and they can not be numerically submereged by the bronze age indo-european migrating wanderers[see Turkic languages expansion]) ie speaking newcomers (and that's could explain why proto indo-european laryngeals have been lost in indo-european descending languages except the anatolian and perhaps the armenian branch cos those 2 were "indigenous" to the pie urheimat and thus have conserved original phonetics of proto indo-european)

[note that this pie root *gwey is connected by comparativist linguists with afro-asiatic (there is still no constructed ie guessed proto afro-asiatic roots) and proto semitic *Hay=>to live, life]

Such sound shifts are very common example spirantization: t=>ssatemization k=>s (this is useful to explain some pie/paa sound shifts)

The word "kam" was most likely inherited from a centum ie language and as you know Turkic words can not start with the sound "sh"=>all the words that start with "sh" in Turkic are "loanwords".

As for "copper" according to Bernal citing Chantraine it could be Semitic related to Hebrew "gopher" and Arabic "shufr" which means "copper" (proto Semitic "p" evolved into modern Arabic "f" as for "sh" it is an indice for this word being borrowed from another Semitic language like Aramaic)

For more explanation please take a look at the threads below:

http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=84700#post84700

http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=86523#post86523

For the last link please take a look especially ate the google books I have posted.http://anthrocivitas.net/forum/showthread.php?p=85501#post85501

Please take orthography and other mistakes into account since I wrote quickly.For example the first paragraphe should be:"There are what are called "sound shifts" for example Greek "bio" (life) Latin "vita" and Sanskrit "jiya" old irish "bethu" old english "cwic"[read quick] ARE ALL cognates that descend from the same constructed (but its more CORRECT to call it guessed) proto indo-european root *gwey which means "to live" Note that those cognates of the descendant ie languages do not all mean "life" but semantically have various meanings from "AGE" to "world"

As for "copper" according to Bernal citing Chantraine it could be Semitic related to Hebrew "gopher" and Arabic "shufr" which means "copper" (proto Semitic "p" evolved into modern Arabic "f" as for "sh" it is an indice for this word being borrowed from another Semitic language like Aramaic)

The English word "copper" directly descends from Latin "cuprum" which in turn evolved from Latin "aes Cyprium" (literally "metal of Cyprus"; I misspelled the word "Cyprium" above: there is an 'i' between 'r' and 'u'). "Copper", "cuprum" and "aes Cyprium" all have the same meaning: copper. But the name of the island of Cyprus may be descended from the Semitic word for copper. Its opposite may also be true: as in Latin, the Semitic word for copper may be descended from the name of the island of Cyprus, which may originally be an Eteocypriot word. There are many other possibilities too, but I don't want to go into too much detail.

The Turkic word for copper "bakir" (it is actually not the only Turkic word for copper, "mis" [directly descended from the Persian word for copper "mis"] is today more prevalent in Turkic languages, but it is possible that "bakir" was the only word for copper in pre-Islamic Turkic languages and was partially replaced by "mis" during the Islamic era of Turkic languages) may ultimately be descended from an ancient form of the name of the island of Cyprus through a metathesis from "*kapir" or "*kupir", 'p' evolving into 'b' at the beginning of the word as is the usual rule in Turkic languages (though it is "pakir" in Kyrgyz language, but don't know whether it is a preservation of the original form or a later evolution from "bakir").

Sorry, Dieneke, I had to divide my comment into two because of its length.

Since I would post an answer to your question I may also add this short quotation from Martin Bernal's book about the wanderwort "copper"/"bakir":

"Gamkrelidze and Ivanov also propose two etymologies that suggest some Sumerian metallurgy was introduced to PIH speakers.

The first is PIH *r(e)ud[h] “red, copper, ore” from the Sumerian urudu.

They claim convincingly that metal names often came from color terms.

In this connection, it is interesting to note that in a bilingual vocabulary the Eblaite gloss on the Sumerian urudu was kapalu/kaparu.

This is clearly derived from the West Semitic kpr, a root with many meanings.One is found in the Hebrew kop(p)er “henna” used for red dye.If kop(p)er “red” also meant “copper” Kypros/Cyprus seems to be a West Semitic name for the island famous for its copper, rather than the toponym originating the metal name found in the Latin cuprum"

This is clearly derived from the West Semitic kpr, a root with many meanings.One is found in the Hebrew kop(p)er “henna” used for red dye.If kop(p)er “red” also meant “copper” Kypros/Cyprus seems to be a West Semitic name for the island famous for its copper, rather than the toponym originating the metal name found in the Latin cuprum"

Many things are possible, but I think we have gone off topic enough, so better end this discussion here, thanks for the information sharing.

Ashraf, I asked you about Behar et al. because you seemed to me to know something that I didn't know about it based on something you wrote in anthrocivitas forum. You write there, "Component amongst Anatolian Turks (the tested ones were Turkmen and less Turk component should be expected for the bulk of Anatolian Turks)."

Firstly, you wrote this only for the autosomal study samples of Turks (excluding the Y-chromosome and mtDNA samples of Turks), didn't you? It is obvious from the context that by Turkmen you mean Turkey Turkmens here. What I especially want to ask you is from where you learned that the tested Turks in Behar et al. were all Turkey Turkmens, as I found no information about the sub-ethnic identities and locations of the tested Turks in all the freely accessible material of the Behar et al. paper.

mr Onur:I was mistaken in fact (to be honest I guessed that the tested persons should have been Turkmen/yörük/tahatcı... since I thought that the Behar's ekip would pick up "pure" human groups to test them such as mozabites from north africa, yoruks from turkey, druzes from israel, bedouins from palestine etc...) and that's why I changed again the signature deleting that part of it.

Then how did you understand that you were mistaken (as there is no information about the sub-ethnic identities or locations of the tested Turks in the freely accessible parts of the Behar et al. paper)?

mr OnurYes indeed, it's my attitude on jumping into datas and try to guess about the origin of the tested persons which is mistaken ie not correct but of course it could very well be that they really tested some "pure" turkmens etc...

Though perhaps some percentage of that north mongoloid component is a legacy of mongols, cumans as well as huns (or at lest a part of the Hun warriors) or unattested pre historical tiny wanderers.I think you noted that many human groups that were tested in Behar's study are majoritly non altaic speaking but in the same time have higher north mongoloid altaic component than Turks, for example Russia...Remains that most probably the ones that wandered to middle east throughout history were in fact mixed caucasoid-mongoloid wanderers as while central Asia and even Mongolia have an important western Asian Caucasoid component, the mongoloid component in western Asia is in traces.Also many cultural aspects of those wanderers diffused to them from western Asia (such as shamanism and very probably wolf, ergenekon myths and tengri/dingir as well as alphabet, manicheanism, hindusim, buddhism and many wanderworts)I think that the main cause why nostraticist linguists group indo-european together with altaic, japonic, korean, uralic, gilyak, and nivkh_despite the fact that caucasoids are very distant genetically from mongoloids, to such as extent that caucasoids are closer negroids than to mongoloids_is in fact due to very old lexical and grammatical borrowings from the western asian genetical and(to greater extent) cultural diffusion that resulted in proto macro-altaic speaking hunterers and gatherers being linguistically submerged by those wandering western asians and having their language higly influenced lexically and grammatically by western asian languages(albeit still altaic and uralic languages differ greatly in morphology from indo-european languages in being non apophonic, non inflective, gender lacking, article lacking, preposition lacking, non synthetic [no compound]languages with monosyllabic mono and biconosonantic[no triconsonantal and tetraconsonantal roots] agglutinative.

Great lexical differences between macro-Altaic languages is due to great time age for proto Macro-Alatic as well as different language contacts with neighbor (Ket...) as well as western Asian wanderers and migrants' (that brought agriculture, animal husbandry, metallurgy,shamanism, hindusim, budhsim, tengrism, alphabet, languages, words[not only in macro altaic but even in macro Sinic too]western asian myths and later monotheistic religions too) languages but it remains that the morphology of macro-altaic as well as uralo-siberic languages (perhaps these 2 families are very remotely descending from a common paleolithic proto language that with time underwent big lexical erosion while retaining the primeval morphology of the proto language) is very similar (ie gender lacking, article lacking, non apophonic agglutinative languages with monosyllabic mono and biconsonantic roots)

Ashraf, if they exclusively tested a specific sub-ethnic group of Turks, I think they would label them not as Turks but with the name of that sub-ethnic group, as they did for sub-ethnic groups like Bedouins and the Druze (though some regard the Druze as an ethnic group on its own). For the authors, the only criterion to be regarded as pure must be being exclusively descended from the tested ethnic group irrespective of sub-ethnic group in the genealogically traceable genealogic tree (not more than a few generations for the overwhelming majority of the members of most ethnic groups including Turks).

That being said, I have only seen two autosomal cluster studies that included Turks together with West, East and South Eurasian populations. One is the Behar et al. study, the other one is Auton et al. 2009. In Auton et al. Turks are Caucasoids with little Dravidoid (South Asian) admixture and with no Mongoloid admixture, while in Behar et al. Turks are Caucasoids with very little Mongoloid admixture and with no Dravidoid admixture (in both studies Turks have no Negroid admixture):

Obviously, the two results cannot both be true. Further complicating the matter is the fact that Caucasian ethnicities like Adygeis (Circassians) and East Europeans like Russians too show either Dravidoid or Mongoloid as the main (and mostly the only) non-Caucasoid admixture cluster depending on the study. So there is some confusion here and I think only very detailed genetic sampling and investigation of the Central Eurasian area (in its broadest meaning) will settle the matter.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that Caucasian ethnicities like Adygeis (Circassians) and East Europeans like Russians too show either Dravidoid or Mongoloid as the main (and mostly the only) non-Caucasoid admixture cluster depending on the study.

Apparently the non-Caucasoid component in East European, northern West Asian and Caucasian populations is far from clear, for a particular population of these regions sometimes showing up as Dravidoid, sometimes as Mongoloid and less frequently as a mixture of both in worldwide studies involving both Dravidoids and Mongoloids. Certainly more studies are needed to clarify the issue.

Thank you for all your informations:In a very nutshellAccording to the distinguished linguist Greenber the closest language families to indo-european are Altaic ,Uralic, Gilyak, Japonic, Korean, Nivkh (he has a book with this name and called this family Euro-Asiatic) this is mostly based on the fact that personal pronouns of some of the languages belonging to these families have similar personal pronouns with indo-european while their grammar are very different and the amount of their shared lexic roots is not as big as Afro-Asiatic and Kartvelian (toward indo-european).

But grammar as well prepositions of Afro-Asiatic is very similar with the indo-european one and Dolgopolsky contests Greenberg works showing that those personal pronouns are also present in Afro-Asiatic and even they have more matches with ie eurasiatic and nostratic than uralic and altaic.

The problem is that first written text of an uralic or altaic language is very late (8th century Orhon inscriptions) and hunter gatherer human groups could borrow personal pronouns from neolithic peoples (it could be said that hunters gatherers does not need personal pronouns)

Altaic and Uralic languages gramar is very different as they lack prepositions,inflection,ablaut,article,gendre distintion and are agglutinative for example:Turkish: evimizden (ev/eb=house, an old loan from Aramaic beta=>orhon symbol for B came from Aramean beta letter according to Nihad sami, imiz=our, den=from)Hungarian: hazam (haz is an indirect loan from Semitic "hawsh=countryside house" via Indo-European)

Another common feature of Altaic (I am assuming that such a language family exists) and Uralic languages that you should mention is vowel harmony.

I think primitivity of Uralic and Altaic languages is something that should be expected as they were exclusively spoken by hunter-gatherers until relatively recent times. That is why they heavily borrowed words from Indo-European and Semitic languages as they spread among settled and pastoral populations mostly speaking Indo-European languages.

I forget to mention that "house" has not an indo-european etymology and that's why linguits such as Möller and Venneman connected it with proto Semitic "hawsh"=house (Akkadian "hushu", Arabic "hawsh")

The "problem" with Turkic (and generally speaking with many of the agglutinative languages of Siberia such as Altaic, Uralic, Aleut, Japonic) is that many listed "pure" Turkic words do lack a Turkic etymology.

For example there is an attested Turkic (and also Altaic) root "at"=to throw, and we have also "at"=horse, both "at" are listed as "pure" Turkic words though the conncetion of "at"=horse with "at"=to throw is ambiguous and unexplainable and there are hundreds of such words (note that "at" could be connected with sahred semito-egyptian and indo-iranian isogloss "asw"=horse which is the satem form of "ekw(os)"=horse) for example "bal" (honey) when we have proto Turkic "bal" meaning to tie (bal could be conncted with afro-asiatic "milt"=honey with b<=>m sound change.Also "bugh" which mean barley, and proto Turkic "bogh" which means to press (but it could be connected with proto afro-asiatic "bur"=barley, keeping in mind that barley was first cultivated in western Asia)

The nominative case of the 1st personal pronoun in proto indo-european "ego" has cognats in afro-asiatic "aku" but not in Uralic-Altaic-Aleut...("aku/ego" perhaps has a primeval meaning of "which"[see similarity with proto Afro-Asiatic and proto Indo-European "ki"=which, who)

"we" (we) "mi" (me) "ti/si" (you) have cognates in both ie,aa,uralic,altaic... and those words could be onomatopoeic or we can perhaps connect "mi" with "man"=who, sperm in Afro-Asiatic and man in Indo-European??

3 rd personal pronouns are independant innovations (from demonstrative "that" that are interestingly shared by aa&ie but not with altaic and uralic)

The prepositions which are completly lacking in the agglutinative "pospositionous" uralic and altaic are identical in aa and ie (en=in, bi=by, ad=to... see Dolgopolsky)

Keeping in mind that Altaic (and the other Siberian languages) are tightly connected with the "mongoloid" genomic component and with "eastern" hg's (N,Q,C) and also urhiemat of those languages should be in eastern asia =>one can think that similarity between those languages and some western asian languages are the result of ("widegenomically" proven) western asian migrations to eastern Asia[actually Altaic, Japonic and other Siberian languages appear closer in lexical roots and pronouns than other "caucasoid" languages such as Iberian, Bask, NW Caucasian and NE Caucasian languages!?]ie the great similarity of personal pronouns between Indo-European and Altaic&Uralic[though "ego"=I is lacking in Uralic and Altaic and present only amongst Afro-Asiatic and Indo-european of the nostratic branches]that contests with very different morphology as well fewer (than Afro-Asiatic/Kartvelian/Indo-European shared lexical roots) shared lexical roots between Uralic/Altaic/Indo-European (large part of them are loans but a part of them could have been inherited from "proto human" tongue) is very probably results of language contacts between prehistorical westasian migrants to east asia/siberia that inteacted with folks that spoke the proto forms of Uralic/Altaic/Japonic/Eskimo/Nivkh... (number of those west to east movements are historically attested throughout Indo-Iranian loans in proto Uralic and proto Altaic for example)

"The Eurasiatic hypothesis...One of the basic difficulties to proving a genetic relationship between two languages is that contact between populations often results in exchange of words, so that similarities in vocabulary do not necessarily indicate a common origin."

Old Blog Archive

Dienekes' Anthropology blog is dedicated to human population genetics, physical anthropology, archaeology, and history.

You are free to reuse any of the materials of this blog for non-commercial purposes, as long as you attribute them to Dienekes Pontikos and provide a link to either the individual blog entry or to Dienekes Anthropology Blog.

Feel free to send e-mail to Dienekes Pontikos, or follow @dienekesp on Twitter.